linking Sarawak civil society members and the world

Archive for August 1st, 2010

While as many as 36 arrests were made in West Malaysia for participation in the Anti-ISA candle light vigils last night the 2 events in Sibu and Kuching did not produce any report of arrests. ISA had been used on Sarawakians before and therefore it is important that citizens here stand up against such anti-human rights laws. The arrests were in clear contrast with how the police dealt with the violence instigators who claimed to be ISA supporters-as reported here.

Stanley, Ooi Thean Poh, ex-Councilor of Long San Mr Anthony and I met Mr Zakaria Idris of Miri JPN to discuss about issues arising from reports which arose from the survey reports which we had submitted before. We also sent him a new report from our survey in March. Mr Zakaria from Belaga told me that there are still many unknown no of cases of citizens who have not been documented even though the Government had claimed recently that they had processed over 140 000 applicants since 2007. He said the 66 000 said to be the number of undocumented citizens is not reliable-and there is no certain idea how many there are out there who are without documents. He also drew attention to the fact that the word `process’ does not mean that the applications had been approved.(more…)

11 groups call upon the EC to increase appointment of Assistant Registrars (Penolong Pendaftar)-especially extend it to civil society representatives, to help lift the very low voter registration in this country. Sarawak is hardest hit by this low voter registration -where 33.8% of eligible residents are not registered. It is at the bottom in terms of voter registration rate in all states. In rural areas the registration rate could be as low as only 1/3!